Monday, June 22, 2015

RING, CROAK, RING

Just ask Conner. He is nine years old and my grandson. His skin is pristine and without wrinkle. His eyes are keen. His powers of observation are laser-like.

I have forbidden him to look at me—for the rest of my natural life.

This weekend I caught him staring. I always know when he’s going to comment on some unfortunate aspect of my advancing decrepitude. He shuts his mouth. And he quits blinking.

Sure enough.

“YaYa,” he began.

“What, Conner?” I said, girding up my wrinkled forehead.

“You know what you could be for Halloween?”

No good could come of this, but I asked anyway. “Oh good grief! What? What could I be for Halloween?”

He leaned over, pinched the fat under my chin and said, “You could be a frog or a lizard. You know, one of those lizards with that flapping thing under their chin.”

“A dewlap? Are you saying that I could be a lizard with a dewlap for Halloween?”

He smiled a cherubic smile. “Yes.”

I sighed. “I was thinking more of a pelican with a pouch.”

His smile widened; his dimples flashed; his eyes twinkled. I searched his profile for a hint of a gene-induced double chin. Nothing.

Getting old is making me crazy. I thought I would be better at it or not care so much! But wow! It’s the worst and not because it limits your Halloween costume choices.

Stuff is starting to break, hang, and quit outright, all over the place.

And if Conner isn’t happily reminding me about my dewlap trouble, it’s the television telling me that my ears are shot.

Tinnitus. Ringing in my ears. I have it. I don’t know when I got it, but now I have it. The television commercial said that I might get tinnitus, and then I got it, which means that I got it from the television . . . or from Conner, telling me that I should be a frog for Halloween. Either way, it stinks.